


The Family You Choose

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Brothers, Gen, brothers by choice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 10:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1602617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ok. I do understand why people keep matching Loki up with Sherlock. But...</p><p>...this seems like an even more logical pairing. Yeah, all right. It's fanfic crack. But it's fun. (grin)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

“You’re guarding him!” a voice said from the other side of Mycroft’s office—a side that should not have been occupied by anyone whatsoever, without all hell breaking loose in the way of security alerts. Mycroft looked up, startled, his hand already moving lightning fast for the emergency switch.

He never reached his goal. His hand, instead, stopped cold as though the air itself clutched his wrist, tight. He frowned, then, as a slim, tall figure stepped out of shadow into existence. He reminded Mycroft just a little of Sherlock—foxier of face, perhaps, and without Sherlock’s curls, but there was a similar reckless, passionate intelligence raging behind those blue eyes. Blue eyes, dark hair, figures slim to the very brink of skeletal, graceful, and, yes—both brilliant and a bit mad.

He knew the difference, though. Among other things, while you might get Sherlock into the dramatic green and gold and black outfit, even Sherlock would draw the line at the helmet tucked under the god’s arm. And Loki was famous after the prior year's attacks worldwide.

Mycroft didn’t watch the news—but only because he got information a good deal sooner than the news stations and papers, and couldn’t afford to settle for the lag-time. He studied the man approaching him, evaluating the frustration and resentment and grief that seemed tangled up in the youthful face before him. “Loki Laufreyson og Odinson?”

“I prefer just ‘Loki.’”

Mycroft added one more iota of information to the scant detail provided by S.H.I.E.L.D.’s reports. Family troubles indeed! Still, he was talking—for which deities be praised, even if the only deity earning the praise was Loki himself. Getting god-blasted would put a serious dent in Mycroft’s afternoon.

“I’ve always felt a dual heritage was an advantage,” he said, mildly. “I’ve envied those who draw from different lines or cultures.”

“So why are you so loyal to that scrawny, stupid, posturing brat of a brother of yours? Why not find one from some other line, and expand your own connections?” Loki said. “He puts you at risk, you know.”

Mycroft grimaced, “It had come to my attention, yes. Do you think you could let my arm go? It’s beginning to get uncomfortable.”

Loki’s eyes narrowed. “If you hit that emergency switch I promise, I’ll turn your people to rats and mice and set Freya’s cats loose on them. Do you understand, little human?”

Mycroft sighed gustily. “Yes, yes, I understand. Goodness, you really are as bad as Sherlock. Does it never even occur to you that all the insults and spite only set people against you?” He waited; then, when his arm remained pinned, he said, pointedly. “Well…I don’t have all day.”

“No,” Loki growled, “and if you keep being a pompous, babbling prig you’ll be lucky to have all afternoon.” But he released Mycroft’s arm—and Mycroft was not surprised. There was a fine art to the management of bratty little brothers, and Loki appeared to be a fine example of the species.

“What are you here for,” Mycroft asked, rubbing life back into his wrist and hand. “I thought you were Agent Coulson’s problem this week.”

“The God of Mischief and Lies is not assigned like a duty on a volunteer rota,” Loki said, then stopped and considered. An amused grin suddenly lit his face. “My word. You’re baiting me.”

“It’s called ‘teasing,’” Mycroft corrected. “Now, do help yourself to tea or scotch or whatever we’ve got in the mini-fridge, and settle yourself for a while. I’ve got to get through these orders on how to handle the problem in Eastern Europe, and until I’m done I haven’t got—“

“You are! You’re protecting the hell-born brat!” Loki said. He put aside his helmet, letting it drop into one of the big wrought-iron armchairs, and sat on Mycroft’s desk, pushing aside the files and tablets until he could sit tailor-fashion dead in the middle, like a cat taking up the prime work space. He leaned his elbows on his knees, and his chin on his fists, and peered at Mycroft, fascinated. “You’re actually taking monumental professional risks to protect your brother’s life and even his reputation. After he expressly ignored your indications that Magnussen was off-limits to you. Why?”

Mycroft shrugged. “Well, it’s not as though I honestly regret the wretched man’s passing,” he said.

Loki frowned—then his face lightened, and he crowed with laughter. “You like him. No—you love him! You poor sod. You actually love Sherlock Holmes.”

Mycroft shrugged a very expressive “shit happens to the best of us” shrug. “Guilty, as charged.”

Loki’s brows furrowed. “You’re smarter than that. I can tell—you’ve got that nasty little streak of Odin-wisdom in you. Not enough to have lost you an eye—yet—but it’s there. You know the odds are he’ll bring you to grief one of these days.”

“Oh, repeatedly,” Mycroft admitted. “You do know you’re making my afternoon’s work a good deal more difficult, yes?”

“Let your minion do it,” Loki said, snapping his fingers.

“They’re not really gone,” Mycroft said, looking at the blank space where his files had been. “No more than my arm was actually trapped by air. Prince of illusions, god of lies. It’s still going to be waiting for me when you’re gone.” For the first time he sounded grumpy and irked—as though he were dealing with Sherlock, not Loki.

“Thor—he’d die for me, if he thought he must,” Loki said. “He’d lie for me, too. But this…" he looked smaller, suddenly, and more vulnerable. “To put himself at risk, over and over, just because I was fool enough to misbehave? No. Not he. Not the Allfather. Frigga alone, perhaps….”

“Your mother?” Mycroft’s relationship with his own mother made him wary of the word.

“No. I have no mother whose name can be said. She died before I knew to ask her name.” Loki looked away. “Frigga, though…” He swallowed, and scowled, and turned back. “Why do you tend him so faithfully? Why do you _protect_ him?”

“He’s my brother,” Mycroft said, as though it were all that needed saying.

“Don’t speak to me of brothers.”

Mycroft was just thinking that this was actually a rather promising lead, when out in the office a ruckus transpired—a ruckus, a fracas, even a bit of a dust-up from the sound of it. Mycroft sighed as his door burst in.

“Must you?” he snapped, looking at the tall man in far too garb-ish clothing with an oversized hammer so large that it suggested some sort of psychological compensating device. “At least your brother didn’t break the door down.”

Beside the God of Thunder, slim and neat Phil Coulson peered in. “Oh, sorry, Mycroft. We weren’t sure you weren’t in danger.”

“He is in danger,” Thor proclaimed.

He had a good voice for proclamation, Mycroft noted. “Have you considered a future in politics,” he asked, amiably. “You’ve got the looks and skills for a future on the hustings. Granted we’d have to trot you around to Saville Row for a new wardrobe, but really, you look perfectly electable to me.”

“That’s an insult, coming from Mycroft,” Sherlock drawled, coming around the bulwark of Asgardian Manliness. “He’s civil service. You don’t want to hear what he has to say about the general caliber of elected officials.”

Loki, still sitting on Mycroft’s desk, grinned at The British Government. “Wit. Who knew? Have they taken to indoctrinating all civil service members with a sense of humor?”

“Risky,” Mycroft said. “They might recognize the absurdity of the entire system.”

Loki sniggered, covering his mouth with his hands, eyes gleaming over the tips of his fingers.

“We have come to collect you, Loki Laufreyson, once known to the Nine Worlds as Loki Odinson, God of Mischief, Lord of Lies.”

“You left out trickster to the stars,” Loki said, grinning, hands folded as if in prayer below his chin—much as Sherlock’s when the detective was studying.

Mycroft sighed, and shook his head. “Entertaining as this is, it’s not getting much done. Could you all take this out of my office, please? I’m trying to get my paperwork done.”

“I shalt not be dismissed ‘ere my brother has been taken back into custody,” Thor intoned.

“You’re not planning on using the sledgehammer, are you?” Mycroft said, testily. “Only I just got the walls repainted the way I like them, and the carpet’s new just this year.”

“Mycroft,” Sherlock hissed, “Would you stop that? This isn’t some…some…some committee meeting, for goodness sake!” He glanced at Thor, and hissed, “He’s not going to wait for you, you know, big brother. _Some_ people can ignore you when it’s convenient.”

“As opposed to you, who ignore me in all weathers,” Mycroft said, tartly. He looked over at Loki. “Pardon. He’s always this way. Dramatic.”

“Tell me about it,” Loki said, rolling his eyes, merriment barely held in check. “Thor’s just the same. Histrionics over the least little thing. And competitive?”

“You can hardly claim you’re not,” Mycroft said, firmly. “Now, Loki, do be a dear fellow? I know you can keep this lot busy if it suits you and be back in time for tea. Would you mind taking those three out for walkies for an hour or so, so I can get the work done? I promise, hot assam and ginger nuts for tea if you do. Please?”

Loki’s eyes sparkled. “I think I can manage that.”

And then, to the eyes of all mortals present—and of Thor Odinson, too—he uncoiled himself from Mycroft’s desk and darted out the door, somehow eeling past his opponents and racing through the outer office, shouting a cheerful, “Nyah-nyah, can’t catch me. You’re king of the castle, but I’m the dirty rascal.”

Mycroft watched as Sherlock, Thor, and Coulson spun on a ha’penny and raced after their prey. He smirked, then, and said, “I know you’re here, Loki. Close my door and make some tea and shut up. I’ll be happy to give you some attention as soon as I’ve made sure baby brother’s going to survive Eastern Europe.”

“I could make it easier,” a satin voice husked out of nothingness. “I could make it all much easier.” For a brilliant second Moriarty seemed to appear on Mycroft’s laptop screen, and said, “Have you missed me?”

Mycroft smiled—a slow, sweet, evil smile. Without even trying to locate the real Loki, he said, “I think we’re going to get along, you and I.”

And Loki, silently, traced the papers Mycroft had been working on—papers that would have put his entire career at risk—and whispered, with uneasy intensity, “I think we are, too. Odin’s Ravens, I hope we are…” And he came to stand behind Mycroft, hands on the back of the chair, leaning over to whisper advice in his unexpected brother-by-choice’s ear.


	2. Kindred Spirits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To Dormiensa, who asked for more. It turns out there was some on tap.... :D

“He’ll turn on you,” Thor Odinson said, voice surly and brow heavy with disapproval. “I don’t know why you’re spending time and energy on him—he’s only betray you. He’s unable to resist. If nothing comes along to tempt him to it, he’ll betray you for the pure contrary pain of it…crying salt tears even as he does it.”

“I know,” Mycroft said, refusing to look at the Asgardian god. “He’s told me so himself—and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files say the same.”

“He’s ill,” Thor said. His hands gripped tight on the back of the wrought-iron armchair in front of the desk—one of a pair. Mycroft suspected that once Thor was through kneading and mashing the iron, they would no longer match. “He’ll turn on you like a snake, and strike.”

“Oddly enough, snakes generally strike for a reason,” Mycroft said, eyes still fixed on his laptop screen. “Fear. Hunger. Self-defense. Even simple error—a mistaken evaluation of a situation. They’re not just arbitrarily deceitful.”

“Fine,” Thor growled. “Then my brother isn’t a snake. He, however, will turn on you for any reason, or no reason. A mere mortal like you is unlikely to survive his strike.”

Mycroft finally looked up. His eyes were cool and calm, his manner mildly annoyed. “He may well. We are in agreement. Now, if you’re satisfied I’ve heard your message, I do have work to do. My PA can see you out.”

Thor took an athletic spin around Mycroft’s office, forcing the mortal to thank his stars he’d risen high enough to have a _large_ office. Otherwise it would have been like having a Brahma bull take a quick gallop around a phone booth—and not the sort that hums and wheeps at it takes off in time and space, all bigger on the inside than the outside.

Mycroft found the Asgardian god of thunder annoying. Indeed, more than a bit annoying. Like rugby players, professional boxers, and gang enforcers, he was large, and strong, and forceful, and quick to act, and quicker to assume that these were the only really worthwhile virtues in the available roster. Cleverness and guile weren’t just afterthoughts, to Thor and to people like him—they were faintly amusing afterthoughts. Admired in a sort of token way: after all, the Allfather was wise, so wisdom had to be a good thing, but, well…

Being clever first wasn’t quite, well, respectable, was it? Even Asgardian goddesses and lesser spirits like the Valkyries could swing a sword with the best of them. Clever was what you saved for last, the desperation throw. What you did first was shout something that sounded a bit like “Hoyataho!” and go dashing off in full armor to demonstrate your ability to flatten a problem before it could get out of hand.

Which left Thor with little respect for Mycroft, who could see the god grappling with the idea that this man in some way ruled nations armed with little more than quick wits, a sharp tongue, and a reliable internet connection. He’d clearly been told that this was so—but he wasn’t happy about it.

“Divine Thor,” Mycroft said, having settled on “divine” as the least culturally perturbing of the choices of honorific for Asgardians and other deities, “you really have nothing to worry about. Consider me at the very least to be a pending salutary lesson to the powers of Earth. Your brother will turn on me, I’ll get my come-uppance, and probably my death sentence, and within weeks the common wisdom around the globe will be ‘Don’t ever trust Loki, he’ll cheat and keep all your marbles anyway.’ And that will be that, barring any funerary arrangements left possible for whatever is left of my mortal remains. Really, all done, no fuss, limited muss, and it’s off your conscience.”

Thor pouted—and, yes, Mycroft thought, it was a pout—quite a bit like Sherlock’s actually. For all the two men had different styles of attacking a problem (Sherlock usually left out the heavy mallets till last, bless his pointy little head) they were similarly given to temper tantrums, sulks, and pouts. “I have been told it would be unfortunate if you were killed,” Thor grumbled.

“By whom?”

“By Sherlock,” Thor said, then added, “though one is given to doubt his reasoning. A leader so reckless as to consort with Loki is no loss to his people.”

Well, bless the boy! Mycroft thought. Who knew he’d go all gallant like that? “How kind of him to be concerned,” he said, glowing.

“He’s of the opinion you’ve been bewitched or enspelled by my brother,” Thor said. “Duped by a vile and guileful deviant who has lured you from your true loyalties.”

Ah. On second thought, baby brother was his usual territorial self. Mycroft was _his_ brother, and apparently had no right letting Loki crawl in under his wing beside Sherlock. Sherlock owned the nest, the mother-hen, the chicken feed, and any eggs that showed up as a side benefit of the deal.

“I see,” he said, feeling a bit like the swift-turning snake was named “Sherlock.” “I probably need to have a word with him, then.” He pointedly pulled out a leather-bound day planner (the one he used mainly when he had to put on a good show, as his real calendar was kept digitally and was in the care and keeping of Anthea, Goddess of the Schedule). He jotted down a note to himself (“I wonder if Thor and Loki got mixed up in the cradle—God knows, Odin’s brains didn’t get passed on…”), then closed the book. “There. Done. I’ll be in touch with my brother at a later time. Thank you for the heads up. Now, as I said—I’ve work to do.”

Thor stood in front of the desk, hammer hanging loosely from one vast fist, and said, forlornly, “Why do you spend such time and take such risks, Oh British Government?”

Mycroft didn’t even need to think about that one. “I like him,” he said. “Rather a lot. Now, please, don’t make me call your Captain America fellow to talk you off this ledge. Toddle along, there’s a nice deity.”

And, to his relief, Thor left, his backward glance mingling concern and reproach….he having evidently realized that Mycroft was getting more than a little catty toward the end of their meeting.

Mycroft let himself wilt onto the desk, head in his arms, as he moaned. “Ye Gods and little fishes.”

“Thor only fishes for whoppers,” Loki said. “Have I told you about the time he went fishing for the Midgard Serpent? It was an even bet whether Asgard would be destroyed by the tidal waves and earthquakes as he tried to haul my boy out of the oceans, or be driven into mourning by Thor’s death. Either way it was stupid. It’s not like anyone has a decent recipe for fillet of Jormungandr. And given his ancestry, well—it would have seemed cannibalistic to eat my own son for dinner.”

Mycroft looked at Loki, frowning. “You’ve got children?”

Loki smirked. “Well, the time lines are a bit tangled, and there’s some argument how it all comes out, but, yes. Several, though I haven’t worked out what my future self got up to entirely. My past self had a wild and crazy time with a stallion, though.”

Mycroft blinked, and ran through what he knew of myths, and sighed. “Right. Sliepnir. And if your adoptive father didn’t feel odd taking your offspring as a mount, well…” He shuddered. “And really, I’ve heard people say they wanted a night with someone hung like a stallion, but I mean, seriously…”

“Oh, he was seriously hung like a stallion,” Loki said, with dreamy nostalgia. He began to hum “Wildfire.”

Mycroft threw a fountain pen at him. “Stop that this instant, you wretched boy. Really, that was uncalled for.”

Loki smiled a contented smirk. “No. I promise. It wasn’t.” He sighed, and switched to “Oh, What a Night!”

Mycroft found his mouth slowly turning up, and a snort caught him off-guard. “You’re quite terrible,” he said.

“Of course I am,” Loki replied. Then he said, “Why do you defend me to Thor?”

“Because,” Mycroft said, fondly. “If I can do it for Sherlock, I don’t see a reason in the world why I wouldn’t do it for you.”

“Because I’m not your real brother?”

“No,” Mycroft conceded. “I’m not. I’m human. I’ll die in the next twenty to forty years. You’ll live thousands. I’ll never be able to do half the things you do. But—,“ he shrugged and said, a bit helplessly, “I like you. I choose you. I simply appear unable to turn away impossible little brothers like you and Sherlock. It’s not in me.”

“It’s not in me to be true,” Loki said, fretfully.

“Oh, see if you can manage for forty years,” Mycroft said, teasing him. “A mere moment in your life. Hold out that long, and I’d dead and it’s over.”

Loki closed his eyes, and said, fiercely, “I don’t want it to be over.”

“Then you should be playing this game with Thor,” Mycroft pointed out. “I can’t help what I am, any more than you can help what you are, brother-by-choice.” His voice was as prim and teasing as it was with Sherlock.  “Tell me, does Thor know yet you’re ruling in his father’s stead?”

Loki shot him a narrow-eyed glance. “How do _you_ know?”

“I’m clever as a serpent,” Mycroft said, smiling. “Does he?”

Loki shrugged. “Not yet.”

“When he learns, and he’s taken that damned hammer to you again—come back here.”

“How do you bear it,” Loki asked, suddenly. “You run this. You could OWN it. They would bow down to you. How do you bear working in this little room, unknown, uncelebrated, barely respected, even by those who count? ‘A minor position in government.’ Fools and ministers of fools attempting to bluff you and bully you daily. How do you stand it?”

Mycroft smiled. “Rather well, actually. So much less bother than trying to be Prime Minister or Queen or the like. I do my work, and either win or lose, and it’s done, and I go on to the next thing, with no messy groveling and ceremony to mess around with. Keeps my calendar so much less cluttered. How do you bear the burden of the Allfather?”

Loki looked at him, eyes haunted. “Badly, brother-by-choice. Badly.”

Mycroft nodded. “I thought so,” he said, softly. “Come along, then. Come help me work out ten ways to distract Francoise Holland. I haven’t given France the run-around in months. It should be a bit of a pick me up for both of us.”

He pulled his files up on his laptop, Loki leaned against the back of the chair, and soon the two were laughing as they designed a decision making process for the next EU agenda that devolved into near-infinite closed loops.

They laughed for hours.


End file.
